YOUNG ICT LADY OF THE YEAR
For the fifth time, in addition to the "ICT Woman of the Year", Data News is looking for a "Young ICT Lady of the Year".

We received no fewer than 22 unique candidatures for this new award. These are young women, 30 years of age or younger, with already an impressive track record in an ICT company or in the IT department of a company. They were able to put themselves forward or be nominated by a colleague. The voting list was composed by the grand jury. By online voting the Data News' readers decided on the five nominees. The jury will chose the final winner of the Young ICT Lady of the Year among the top 5 most voted candidates.

Eva De Vocht (born 1987) is a commercial engineer with a focus on management information systems and worked previously for Accenture. She currently works as a solution architect at the ICT Department of Agfa. She is responsible in her team for the BW (SAP Business Warehouse) and BI applications used by 2,000 employees.
Since she started work for Agfa in 2012, her job title has stayed the same but the content has, however, changed. She currently finds technological solutions for complex business problems such as the roll-out of SAP Business Objects.
She believes herself that profiles such as BW administrator will evolve into that of data wizard just like her employer switches from a factory environment to a technology business that is able to take strategic decisions based on data but Eva also believes in the importance of female impulse. “I believe that every woman in ICT is crucial for a business because women think differently from men.”

Ursula Dongmo

Ursula Dongmo graduated in 2009 with an engineering diploma in electronics and telecommunications specializing in multimedia. Via her thesis, she received a grant to carry out further research at the university. She changed this job two years later to start work as an IT consultant at a Dutch bank. There, she became specialized in Dutch and SEPA (European) payments giving rise to her ambition for project management. In November 2013, she switched to ING where she embarked on various paths in combination with intensive training and self-development, thanks to an ORMIT traineeship.
She was among other things, a business consultant, information analyst, transition support manager, project manager and is currently an expert process manager. She hereby puts a team together herself for end-to-end service monitoring with herself as the supervisor. Here, she monitors the national activities of ING Belgium with a special eye for end-to-end application stacks.

Zoë Ehuhu

Although Zoë Ehuhu, born in 1991 has only recently started work as a Junior SAS consultant at LACO, she has already acquired quite a lot of experience. She did a work placement at Business & Decision as a junior CRM consultant and as a graduation project developed the music platform SONIQ that combines various music sources. Here, they used 13 different technologies in a team of four people. In her free time, she works on a webshop in order to learn the IT aspects of e-commerce with the aim of really using the shop in time. As an SAS developer she makes, improves and updates dynamic and static reports so that these can be personalized where necessary.
Ehuhu wishes in the future not just to use her skills as an SAS developer but also hopes to go on to pursue a coordinating function.

Jessica Ruelens

Jessica Ruelens (born 1986) already had five years analytics experience in Sydney before going to work for AE in Belgium. The commercial engineer started her career at SAS Institute Australia where she worked as a consultant for large banks and telecommunications companies. She then became a customer analyst at Quantium, one of Australia’s most renowned data consultancy bureaux.
In 2015, Jessica started working at AE in Belgium where she focuses mainly on big data for credit scores and customer segmentation. “My passion for figures, people and technology enabled me to develop strong data analysis skills. I was also able at AE to already assist with a really innovative big data project for a large Belgian bank in which more accurate models for credit scores were devised.”
Jessica’s colleagues praise her for her knowledge but also the manner in which she deals with her colleagues. This is also why she wishes to continue as a consultant of analytics and big data so she can combine her hard and soft skills in the best possible manner.

Heleen Van Cauter

Before Heleen Van Cauter (born 1988) went to work at Capgemini, she graduated as an ICT industrial engineer with an Erasmus semester in Porto. She went to work for her employer with Microsoft business line with the focus on analysis. She meanwhile has more than seven projects under her belt focusing mainly on analysis and user experience. She also shares this expertise in training, which she provides for colleagues and end users all over the world. She has meanwhile followed a post-academic course at the KU Leuven and is active at Women@capgemini, which promotes leadership and gender awareness and is a member of the Fast Tracker Community. She currently lives in Ghent.
Her ambitions are among other things, gaining more practical experience in the UX area and sharing that experience within her company or as it states on her nomination: “She wants to change the web, one website at a time.”

ICT WOMAN OF THE YEAR

The voting list was composed by the editorial staff of Data News. By online voting you can decide now on the three nominees.

And the top 5 is...

ANJA CAPPELLE
Managing Director of The Reference

No name is as closely associated with the web agency The Reference as that of Anja Cappelle. She has worked there throughout her career, and has been managing director since the takeover by Emakina in 2007. After studying Germanics at Leuven University, she started as a journalist with The Reference, writing for one of the first e-zines in the country, namely the Internet Business Summary. Very soon she was taken on board the web agency itself, as a project manager. Her biggest customer was KBC, where she tells us The Reference achieved some heroic performances, including early electronic banking (Cyber TV), and mobile banking (still via WAP at that time). Over the following years, she progressed to become account manager and sales manager, until the arrival of Emakina, when she was appointed as Alexander Van de Rostyne’s successor at The Reference. The challenge this presented was to mix the hard core of The Reference veterans with the right fresh blood and also to successfully oversee the strong growth they were experiencing.
The focus in 2015 is on assisting customers with their digital transformation: from conceptual strategic phase to multi-channel implementation. The Reference aims not only to deliver services, but also to integrate them.
Cappelle lives with her partner and her 2 children and prefers to keep it analogue in her free time, playing tennis or immersed in her gardening activities.

ANNELEEN DEMASURE
Managing director, Wijs

Anneleen Demasure is managing director of one of the most well-known bureaux in Belgium. She assumed daily management of Wijs in October 2013 taking over from Bart De Waele. She carries out this function as the managing director and heads up the management team.
Demasure came on board based on her experience in marketing but also in leading a creative bureau. She has a master’s in marketing (KU Leuven) and worked for Unilever from 1998 to 2010. She worked there among other things as brand manager and customer development manager in order to finally become customer marketing director Benelux. She was the strategic and managing director at the creative agency Idee Fiks & Idee Kids from 2010 to 2013.
While at Wijs, she worked hard on professionalization towards larger clients (including various major banks, Microsoft, Akzo Nobel, Telenet, De Lijn and Carglass) resulting in successive years of double-digit growth in sales, a substantial increase in profitability from 40 k in 2013 to 800 k in 2015 but also higher NPS and Q4 quality scores.
With Sitecore and Selligent, Wijs has recently also embraced a wider range of technology.

ANNEMIE DEPUYDT
Director ICTS, KU Leuven

Annemie Depuydt gained a master’s degree in geography and a master’s in IT from the KU Leuven. She lectured for a year at the Catholic KH Leuven University College but later returned to the university. She has been the head of management of ICTS since 2008. This is the unified ICT Department of the university that previously brought together the previous Ludit and AIV. Annemie Depuydt thus unified the former computer centre together with operational IT.
Her task was, however, far from over. Meanwhile, there is indeed the coordinating KU Leuven Association to which also the university colleges Thomas More and Odisee and others belong. This means that all ICT systems must also be accessible for most of these institutions. Think for example, of Internet access but also webmail, all administrative info (KU Loket) and the student platform Toledo. An important platform was for example still the roll-out of Office 365 but also Lync and Skype for Business are recent challenges and we have not yet touched on Kotnet or the HPC cluster (high performance computing for scientific calculations) or the SAP project (Anemoon). Basically, this lady knows how to fill in her days and is also a networker. She is responsible at ICTS for a team of over 220 employees.

DOMINIQUE LEROY
CEO Proximus

She has been CEO of Proximus for about two years now and everyone agrees that Dominique Leroy has brought new energy to the biggest telecom operator in the country. The rebranding of Belgacom to Proximus at the end of September lasy year has only strengthened her drive. She also managed to attract new high flyers and is strongly pursuing further growth. Leroy’s ability is recognised both within and outside of the company, and she was recently the first CEO to attend the annual Proximus event for corporate customers.
That she was destined to progress quickly was evident when she swapped her job as CEO of Unilever for the position of sales manager at Proximus. A year later she became executive vice president of the consumer business unit. When Didier Bellens was fired at the end of 2013, Dominique Leroy was put forward a few weeks later as the appropriate female successor. And with justification, as it turns out.
Now 51, Dominique Leroy studied at the Solvay Business School before joining Unilever, where she progressed over the course of 24 years in, among other things, marketing, finance, sales, logistics and general management. Since 2007 she has been country manager and vice president customer development. She likes music, travelling and especially sports (walking, cycling, skiing and mountaineering).

SUKI MAESEN
Manager IT Competence Center, Atlas Copco Airpower

As manager of the IT Competence Center of Atlas Copco Airpower, Suki Maesen transfers the business needs into IT solutions by controlling eight teams, around 100 people. She also deals with IT governance for example, by way of introduction of project portfolio management and application lifecycle management. She also introduces an internal client day in order to bring business and IT closer together. Maesen is driven by change management leading to the transformation of the IT department.
Although she has only been active for three years in her current role, Maesen has already been working since 2004 for Atlas Copco where she started working as a project engineer. She progressed from this position to team leader responsible for all internal and external IT communication, a position that she still performs.
As well as for Atlas Copco, Maesen is among other things active as a mentor by supporting student commercial engineers with their theses and participates in debates on IT but also on STEM or gender diversity.